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View Full Version : DM Help Ideas for Skill challenges for a pirate attack?



martixy
2019-09-13, 10:36 AM
TL;DR: System is D&D. My players are in a frontier town that under attack by a whole boatload of pirates. In fact, several boatloads of pirates. Literally. I've come up with a couple skill challenges to intersperse during the combat encounters, but I feel like I need a few more.

I could use some ideas.


Long version: Pirate ships are coming into the bay, the defenders have a couple of their own to engage in ship to ship combat. The town has some militia positioned in makeshift barricades along key choke-points in the streets. The populace has been marshalled in the local church, as one of the most sturdy buildings, being made of stone. Any injured are to be brought to a field hospital erected in a large warehouse.

My current ideas:
1. A team of sappers comes on shore, hauling large casks of explosive jelly. They rig them up to blow up buildings.
> Disable and dispose of the bombs.
2. One of the ships has some kind of anti-ship device, by hooking some chains to their hulls and tearing them apart or capsizing them.
> Save the victim ship and disable the device.
3. A building collapses on top of a bunch of defenders.
> Dig out the defenders without collapsing more of the building on top of them.

Pauly
2019-09-13, 09:41 PM
4) Make a fireship - load up a smallish fishing boat with tar and other combustibles, set it on fire then float it into the pirate ships.

5) Lure a pirate ship into an ambush. Use some form of distraction such as pretty women to entice a pirate ship to leaving the fleet and going on a private sortie.

6) stop a fire in somewhere very flammable like a ship or a gunpowder magazine or very important like a temple.

Calthropstu
2019-09-13, 10:19 PM
Rescue someone who has fallen into the water tangled in ropes.

Have a pirate who was shanghaid try to sneak away from the fight.

If the battle goes south for the pirates, have several take hostages.

Have a pirate be a noble's son who disappeared 10 years ago. (knowledge nobility is so rarely useful. Make this one have a handsome reward attached.)

Side quest possibility: Someone in town used the pirate attack as a cover for murder.

martixy
2019-09-14, 12:35 PM
Thanks for these. I'll put them to good use.